


Doomed but just enough

by reylomancy



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alpha Rey, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Smut, F/M, Omega Ben Solo, Post-TLJ, additional worldbuilding not canon/EU compliant, and also we all know Ben is a Soft Boi and Rey would totally dominate him, because I've never seen this done before, no mpreg or a/b/o specific genitalia though, obviously, that's right I made it all up, there's kind of a twist on the A/B/O angle actually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-05-29 14:56:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15075590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reylomancy/pseuds/reylomancy
Summary: In which Kylo Ren chases Rey from Snoke's throne room all the way to an isolated system in the Outer Rim where relationships are... strange.Turns out, a Force bond may or may not translate to an Alpha/Omega bond on Lykos VI.





	1. Interceptor

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is brought to you by copious amounts of iced coffee, my inability to focus at work (or on my previous WIPs, for that matter), and "Church" by Fall Out Boy (which has been so good as to lend us our title).

****Rey pants as she runs at full speed through the corridors of the _Supremacy_. Only moments after the old Skywalker lightsaber had been split in two, the ship was rocked by the force of a second catastrophic fission. The mega-class dreadnought is utterly massive, stretching at least 20 or 30 kilometers from Snoke’s throne room to either wing tip, so it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what has happened that’s set off a whole blaring chorus of alarms. Whatever it was, Rey suspects it’s also compromised the onboard life-support systems. The previously cool, stale recycled air is stifling hot and feels thin and uncooperative as Rey’s lungs struggle to drag in a full-feeling breath. She can taste durasteel and combustion on it.

It’s easier than she expects to make her way back to the _Falcon’s_ escape pod, trusting the Force to unspool a path through the great twisting ship like a ball of thread in a labyrinth. Corps of stormtroopers and groups of officers run past Rey, no doubt all heading toward some previously designated emergency point. None of them pay her any mind, but even if they had confronted her, Rey would not have thought twice about meeting them, even without her lightsaber. She’d rather push through a full block of troopers than turn and once more face the dark, chaotic bend in the Force that she can feel barreling toward her, nearly right on her heels.

When the kyber crystal in the old lightsaber split, it had thrown both her and Kylo Ren back with the force of its coming apart. Mercifully, it had pushed Rey back toward the entrance to the throne room, Kylo Ren away from it. She’d had only moments to process the scene before her: the smouldering ruins of Snoke’s seat of power, Kylo Ren sprawled out across the chamber from her, his expression dazed and his hair a wreck. The shattered saber casing lying between them, and the fragment of kyber crystal shining beside her leg.

Rey had met his dark eyes for a split second, and then she’d jumped to her feet, snatched up the crystal fragment, and darted through the whooshing chamber doors as fast as she could.

She’d recovered faster, gained a welcome head start, but he is gaining quickly on her now. Rey can feel him right behind her as she slips into the First Order hangar. The transparisteel encasing the _Falcon’s_ pod is sliding back with a hiss beneath her hand when Kylo Ren barrels into the hangar, black boots sliding a little along the smooth durasteel floor. His lips curl back from his teeth and his eyes are wild as he thrusts one arm out toward her. He is not offering her his hand this time. Rey catches a glimpse of black leather stretched across his palm, and then she’s flying across the hangar, blown back by his Force push.

It’s not a very hard push; she gets to her feet with a snarl, and she can feel the Dark flare inside her, demanding she reciprocate with a blow of her own. Across the hangar, Kylo seems to hover in anticipation as well. But Rey buries the impulse, puts all her energy instead into climbing inside the nearest ship. As she seals herself into a sleek, black TIE Interceptor, Rey catches his furious screamed “No!” echoing off the durasteel bay doors.

She pilots the fighter out into open space, hands fumbling briefly as she rushes to learn new controls. The TIE whirls once like a gyroscope, and Rey gets her bearings. The heads-up display helpfully informs her the dust-colored planet she’d watched the Resistance fleet moving toward from the _Supremacy_ is a mineral world called Crait.

She doesn’t even fleetingly entertain the notion of putting the coordinates into the Interceptor’s nav system. She’s in a stolen enemy ship—she’ll either scare her friends half to death or get shot on sight. And besides…

There is the scream of a second TIE fighter, an Avenger, darting out of the _Supremacy’s_ hangar. Rey doesn’t need to focus on the Force signature coming from the cockpit to know it’s Kylo Ren.

She won’t lead him to Crait, even if the rest of the First Order may already know where the last remnants of the Resistance are heading. No. Rey aims the Interceptor instinctively toward Wild Space, as opposite Crait she can get, and hauls ass.

He is on her, predictably.

Rey flies like the whole First Order is on her tail, employing every defensive and evasive maneuver she can coax from the TIE as she struggles to lose him. Rey’s Interceptor is fast, but Kylo Ren flies his Avenger like he was born in a cockpit. The Interceptor buzzes at her frantically whenever she falls into his range. But no other fighters join up to help pursue her. And he doesn’t fire on her once.

Sensing that he is slowly gaining on her and unsure of what else she can do, Rey lets her eyes flutter closed as she meditates on the Force, trusting it to guide the motions of the Interceptor. As soon as Rey taps into it, she can feel the weighty balance of the Force tipping her toward something on the edge of Wild Space… somewhere she needs to be…

She opens her eyes, checks the nav display and lets out a frustrated huff. The region that had called so strongly to her was several systems away. She’s not sure she can shake him for that long. If only she had a—

“Oh.”

Rey feels herself flush with chagrin when she notices the hyperdrive for the first time. None of the Imperial TIE Interceptors she’d ever seen had come with one. She shouldn’t be surprised the First Order has gone in for upgrades.

Heart racing, she plots a quick hyperspeed path toward the patch of space she can still feel calling to her across the parsecs. He’s still close on her heels—Rey can feel him in the Force stronger than ever, a blazing nebula of frustration—and he definitely has a hyperdrive equipped standard in his Avenger, but there’s no way he can know she’s planning to jump. And even if he does, he can’t track her.

The nav system starts beeping insistently, informing Rey it’s nearly time to jump. When the beeps chime so close together they are one long, continuous tone, she slams a hand over the hyperdrive, whooping as the black patchwork of stars before her slides into the writhing blue kaleidoscope of hyperspace.

Rey is expecting a quick jump—the TIE doesn’t carry a lot of fuel, and she’s only traveling a few systems over—and she knows by now to expect the abruptness of the fall back into real space. But she’s only been in hyperspace a few seconds when the Interceptor suddenly shudders to a stop, so quickly Rey feels like she’s going to go flying through the transparisteel viewport.

Rey squints at the unfamiliar world looming past the viewport. Was that… an interdiction field? Once the Interceptor stops rocking and the adrenaline in her veins stops pumping, she calls up the greater nav display to get her bearings.

“The Lykos system?” she reads aloud. “Never heard of it,” she mutters. According to the First Order’s database, there are four inhabited worlds in the system, with the planet bearing the capital, Lykos VI, visible outside the TIE. Its surface swirls with blue oceans and vibrant greenery, and Rey is almost tempted to make planetfall on that basis alone. But this isn’t where the Force had been trying to direct her. Rey is about to slip into another Force meditation for another glimpse of her true destination, when the transparisteel before her falls into shadow.

A single TIE Avenger has materialized in front of her viewport, hiding Lykos VI from view.

Rey’s mouth pops open in shock. Somehow, he’s tracked her through hyperspace. The Avenger faces her Interceptor head on, and though their viewports are both heavily tinted, she imagines she can see Kylo Ren—his clenched jaw, the wild intensity no doubt still flaring in those expressive dark eyes.

He engages the tractor beam on his ship, holds the Interceptor in line with it. The ship quivers around Rey.

Now she knows she’s not imagining it as the Force shows her a clear vision of Kylo Ren, hunched over in a cockpit nearly identical to hers. He can see her too; his dark gaze darts over her face, taking in her look of surprised panic. His throat bobs as he swallows thickly, and ever so slightly his jaw trembles.

“Rey, please,” he murmurs.

She jerks at the sound of his voice, and her hand flies instinctively to the weapons controls.

Rey watches as his own large gloved hand flies to the analogous control panel in his ship, as if in this action too the Force has, for whatever reason, deemed it necessary to link them. But he doesn’t depress the trigger, and neither does she.

“Let go!” Rey snarls at him. Her eyes dart toward the trigger she is holding in a white-knuckled grip. “I’ll shoot!”

His eyes narrow, and he sets his jaw. “No.”

Her hand trembles wildly on the trigger, and despite the chill of the Interceptor’s interior, Rey feels a bead of sweat run down from her temple all the way along the slope of her neck. Kylo Ren seems to follow its path with his eyes, his expression a strangely calm counter to her own agitation.

She’s never had a problem shooting at him before. She’d fired Han’s blaster at him in the forests of Takodana, before she’d seen the man beneath the mask. And on Ahch-To, when the Force had connected them, she’d fired then too. But back then she hadn’t known what it felt like to brush his fire-warmed skin with her own. She hadn’t known the heady rush of locking eyes with him across Snoke’s throne room while they faced down their foes together and protected each other. She hadn’t known how one simple word from his lips could so completely shatter her heart.

_Please._

He’s staring intently at her, that same look in his eyes as when he’d beseeched her to join him in Snoke’s throne room, his overthrown master’s corpse still warm on the floor behind him. It’s a dangerous thing, that look. It instantly brings to mind what Maz Kenata had told her on Takodana, about the belonging she seeks being before her, not behind her. That look in his eyes, that extended gloved hand—they’d offered her all she had ever wanted out of this entire galaxy.

That Dark voice that had whispered to her in the throne room echoes through her head now. How long had she even been with the Resistance? No longer than she and Kylo Ren had been connected, really. She hadn’t cared about the First Order on Jakku; why must she fight them now? Snoke was dead. And Ben was right, together they could be better than him, better than all of it, and she’d have this powerful, devoted man at her side every step of the way, were she to take this path…

He can read in her eyes where her thoughts take her in this moment, and his gaze flares brighter with renewed hope. He keeps one hand still on the guns, but he reaches the other across the cockpit of the Avenger until he is touching the transparisteel of its viewport, his palm outstretched to her across the black space that separates them.

“Let go, Rey. Join me.”

She clenches her jaw, works to throw these thoughts from her head, no matter how appealing they are. He’s playing to her weaknesses. He won’t be better than Snoke. He killed Han. He tried to kill Leia, and Finn. If she goes down this path with him, she’ll become something that’s no longer Rey. A monster. It’s better to be a nobody from nowhere, than a monster.

“I can’t,” she whispers. She feels another bead of moisture running down her face, realizes belatedly that this time it is a tear.

She presses the trigger.

It’s like the fracturing of the _Supremacy_ , but worse. The TIE crafts are infinitely smaller, and the damage rocks every system on board. Her shot blows his right wing to smithereens, sending the Avenger crashing toward the atmosphere of Lykos VI, dragging the Interceptor along with it. Rey has just enough time to jettison out in the escape pod before the Avenger’s left wing crashes through hers, tangling the two crafts together.

Whether the Force had meant her to come here or not, looks like she’ll be making planetfall on Lykos VI.

The pod drops down bumpily in the middle of a forest. The trees here stand close together, ready to catch her, but they are no match for the pod’s thick durasteel casing, and she crashes down all the way to the forest floor. Remembering from the database readout that the atmosphere is Type 1, Rey activates the hatch and quickly crawls out of the creaking vessel.

The forest floor is littered with spiny, needle-like leaves and broken branches, which leave a spicy scent in the air. She stretches her neck back to look up at the atmosphere she’s just passed through, half expecting to see a pod-shaped hole in the thick, gray clouds that hang in the sky. The trees here are tall, taller than the ones on Takodana at least three or four times over; Maz’s castle would be hidden by their tops. Their trunks are thick enough to swallow her TIE fighter. The branches begin along the trucks nowhere near within Rey’s reach, so there will be no climbing them to scout her position.

She chooses the first path through the trees her eyes can perceive, anxious to get away from the downed escape pod. She can sense cities full of inhabitants on this planet, and the database had listed the capital of the Lykos system, Themis, as residing on this world, so Rey trusts in the Force to lead her to civilization.

It’s not long before she spots a thin line of smoke over the tops of the trees. She prays to the Force for it to be a friendly camp of Lykans, and keeps her wits about her as she makes for the smell of burning.

Regretfully, the Force is not on her side today.

The smoke is from a crashed TIE-fighter pod, nearly identical to the one Rey escaped in, save this one is half crumpled and on fire. She holds her position behind a massive trunk and peers carefully into the clearing flattened by the pod’s descent.

Kylo Ren is not inside the burning vessel—Rey furiously quashes the sense of relief that bubbles up in her chest at the realization. He stands a safe distance away, panting as he beats out the fire clinging to one arm of his padded black tunic. His hair is a haphazard mess, and blood trickles down one side of his face. With a grunt he rips the now-extinguished sleeve from his tunic and inspects the skin beneath. From her position in the trees, Rey can see that his arm is an angry red, but she can’t tell much more than that. Whatever Kylo Ren sees makes him rip the sleeve off his good arm as well, wincing as his burned arm must bend to do the work, and uses it to tie off his injured forearm.

His broad back is to Rey, and as she watches him finish treating his wound, she sees the back of his neck tense up. He whips around, wide dark eyes meeting hers, and Rey feels a thrill of fear pulse through her. His bare right hand reaches instinctively for the spot on his belt where his lightsaber is usually clipped, and closes around nothing but air. He glances back at the smoldering pod, swallowing hard, then meets her eyes again.

“Why would you do this?” his voice is as torn and raw as his tattered tunic. Rey says nothing around the lump in her throat. He takes one step toward her, and she retreats further into the trees away from him, ready to bolt. Something flickers across his eyes in response to this.

“I offered you the galaxy, to stand by your side while we ruled together. I gave you a place! Why are you fighting me?” he hurls the words at her as he did in the throne room, his voice a strangled shout. “Why?”

“I don’t want to rule, Ben! I’d rather be alone than become something like the First Order. Power ruined you; I won’t let it ruin me too. So please, just let me go.” Rey hasn’t cried so much her whole life as she has since meeting this man; despite her best efforts, she can feel two more trails of tears leaking from her eyes now.

His eyes narrow at her plea, his mouth crumpling angrily as he gives a growl of frustration.

“No! You still don’t understand—”

“Stop right there!” an unfamiliar voice shouts, startling both Rey and Kylo.

A squadron decked out in gray tactical jackets emblazoned with a script Rey doesn’t recognize emerges from the trees in a perfect circle formation, surrounding the clearing.

“Hands in the air, please!” another voice commands, more quietly, at Rey’s back. She lifts them slowly, turning her head slightly to see a young man with silver hair and a large headset over his ears, pointing a blaster at her. Beneath a pair of goggles, his eyes are a strange shade of amber, so vivid they are almost yellow.

“Turn around, please,” the Lykan commands again, and Rey obeys, turning back to look toward the clearing, where the rest of his squadron is slowly closing in on Kylo Ren, blasters held at the ready. His bare arms are up in the air, his palms facing out, but his expression is dark, calculating.

He meets her eyes as she turns under the orders of the Lykan man behind her, and his lips curl up in a snarl. Rey pales at his hostility, before she realizes he seems to be looking slightly past her. She feels a firm pressure at one wrist, then the other, as her apprehender places her in cuffs much like the ones she’d worn on the _Supremacy_ , though this time her arms are twisted behind her back.

Kylo Ren’s glare darkens with fury the moment the Lykan grabs her. A muscle jumps in his throat as the man clicks the cuffs into place. Then Rey feels a hand gripping her shoulder, steering her into the clearing where the rest of his squadron waits, and Kylo snaps.

She feels a powerful gust that she recognizes as a Force push. This one is about ten times harder than the one he’d directed at her in the hangar though. And this one somehow skirts around Rey entirely, instead throwing the young man behind her off his feet and into the trees, hard.

Every person in the clearing is frozen with shock. The Lykans look confused as to where this attack could have possibly come from, while Rey is confused as to what could have possibly possessed him to do it. An exasperated look flickers in Kylo’s eyes when he sees Rey frozen just as solidly as the Lykans, and she understands then that he means for her to run.

She makes her move just as the squadron does, several of the members hitting Kylo Ren with their blasters. She tries to dart into the trees, but one of the enforcers turns to direct their gun at her. Rey braces herself for the blaster bolt, but nothing comes out. Instead, her head is slammed with a horrible high-pitched keening, the frequency of it making her very skull feel as if it is being roughly jostled. She struggles to get free of the cuffs so she can protect her ears, but they hold firm around her wrists. After just a few seconds of this pain, she goes down.

* * *

Rey wakes up with a vicious headache. The noise from the Lykans’ sonic weapons is still ringing in her ears. Rey stays lying down as long as she can, eyes screwed shut against the pain in her head, and waits for the memory of the sound to fade. It takes her a few minutes to realize that the unpleasant remnant humming in her ears is actually a continuous sound currently being played over a speaker somewhere nearby. It makes her head sore and her gut slightly nauseous, but Rey finds that it is bearable enough and she is in no danger of passing out again.

She shifts on the sparse cot in the cell, fingers searching behind her for a blanket to protect her from the cool air being pumped through the vents in this place. Instead of a blanket, her fingers come away with a thick gray sleeve, and a large, muscular arm inside of it. She twists around on the thin mattress of the cot to find Kylo Ren, still unconscious, spooning her with his warm body.

In one quick motion, she tosses his arm roughly away from her and scrambles to her feet, ignoring the pitching discomfort in her head as she does.

“Guards!” she shouts as loud as she can. Behind her, Kylo Ren stirs on the cot with a groan. She ignores him and shouts again after her first call goes unanswered. By the time someone emerges from the door just visible down the end of a long hallway, he is sitting up on the cot, shooting bleary-eyed daggers at her as she shouts. Someone had taken the time to get him new clothing to replace his charred black outfit; he plucks at the gray long-sleeved shirt in disgust once he notices it.

A petite female Lykan with smooth black hair and wide, yellow-green eyes comes to a stop on the other side of the transparisteel window. She’s wearing a headset over her ears like the ones the squadron in the forest had worn.

“Is there a problem?” she asks in accented Galactic Basic.

“Yes.” Rey jabs a finger behind her. “What is he doing here? Shouldn’t we have different cells?” she snaps.

Surprise colors the Lykan’s face as her vivid eyes follow Rey’s finger to where Kylo Ren is still moodily sitting up in bed, though by now he has roused enough to be listening carefully to their conversation. His pale hands are fisted in the cot’s lone blanket, which he’d apparently been hogging.

“It’s policy to keep mates together, even when under arrest.” The guard’s tone is curious. “Why would you want to be separated?”

Rey feels her face instantly flush with mortification. She very much hopes that the heat she can feel crawling its way up the back of her neck is not visible to Kylo.

“We are not _mates_ ,” Rey hisses angrily between her teeth. “So please. Separate us.”

The woman looks instantly contrite, her face reddening almost as much as Rey’s upon realizing the gaffe she’s made. “I’m sorry! You two just smell— Right, sorry.” She jerks a thumb toward the door. “I’ll go see about getting you separate cells then, until things are sorted out with your case.” She starts hurrying back down the hallway, looking relieved to get away from her angry-faced prisoners.

“Wait!” Rey calls out, and the Lykan woman pauses. “What is that awful buzzing noise? Can anything be done about that?”

“I’m sorry,” the guard still sounds apologetic, but there’s a much firmer edge to her this time. “That is unfortunately quite necessary. We have reason to believe you two are Force sensitive individuals of some training in weaponizing its power. This frequency will prevent you from accessing those skills, for the safety of everyone.”

Well kriff.

* * *

It takes the guard a long time to return, so long that Rey considers shouting again. But the one time she opens her mouth, Kylo Ren glares at her so bitterly, she shuts it immediately. She finds she can’t really blame him. Her headache is wickedly bad where it presses insistently behind her eyes, and any sound louder than their breathing makes her want to throw something.

She’s sitting curled up against the transparisteel window, as far from Kylo Ren as the small space permits. To his credit, he hasn’t moved from the cot in the far corner of the room since waking up. He mostly sits with his back against the wall, his head tilted back and his eyes closed. Rey tries her best not to look at him, but she can’t help but glance at him several times the same instant he happens to glance at her. He hasn’t spoken a word since waking up either.

The next time Rey hears boots outside the cells, it’s not the tiny Lykan woman, but a tall older man with bushy black eyebrows, a mane of grizzled hair, and sharp yellow eyes. His scarred face is twisted in what looks like a permanent scowl. He stops at the transparisteel separator, regards the both of them for a long moment.

“I'm Commander Drys Iylos. Your names.” He doesn't ask, he commands.

“Don't tell him anything,” Kylo murmurs under his breath from the cot. He crosses his arms as Iylos tries to meet his eyes.

Rey ignores him. “My name is Rey. Just Rey.” Commander Iylos raises an eyebrow as he looks from Rey, who is earnestly speaking to him through the glass, to an annoyed-looking Kylo Ren, who is still keeping himself sequestered in the corner. Confusion flickers in the commander’s eyes, then something like bemusement. He reaches one large hand toward a hidden panel on the wall, inputs a command, and the transparisteel window pulls back with a hiss, leaving a gap on all sides of the panel no wider than Rey’s thumb. She’s hit instantly with a clinical scent reminiscent of a typical medbay. Instinctively, Rey presses closer to the slightly open panel, subtly testing its strength by leaning against it with her body.

Commander Iylos mirrors her posture, leaning his weight against the other side of the panel. Rey catches a whiff of what must be his cologne then. It’s overpowering and aggressive, with some kind of bitter note to it that Rey can’t quite place. She has to make a conscious effort not to wrinkle her nose in disgust.

“Now tell me, Rey.” Iylos jerks his chin toward Kylo, and Rey is hit with a fresh wave of his offending scent. “What’s his name?”

Rey bristles under the command. Maybe it’s this Lykan’s smell, or perhaps his rough face and manner—whatever it is, there’s something about him that instantly grates on her nerves.

A tiny voice—she doesn’t think it belongs to the Light _or_ the Dark, just her—makes its case in her head. Kylo Ren is, at the very least, a known quantity. She doesn’t know what to make of these Lykan officers. All she knows for certain is they have the upper hand over her and Kylo: why not stick together in this place then, at least until the two of them are on more equal footing with their captors?

“How about you tell me why we’re in this cell first,” Rey counters, staring down Iylos and his startling yellow eyes. He stares right back, and Rey watches, confused and annoyed, as his expression morphs from hard and businesslike, to incredulous, to downright gleeful. His ruined mouth is grinning ear to ear by the time he deigns to answer her.

“Is that really a question you need to ask?” he mocks. “We found two wrecked escape pods from TIE-series fighters, which I’m sure you know have only ever been piloted by the bloody-damn Imperials or by those sniveling fascist wanna-bes in the First Order. And we found the two of you. So tell me, Rey. Are you a bloody-damn Imperialist,” he takes a step back to take in her appearance from head to toe, “or a sniveling fascist wanna-be?” Behind her, Kylo growls lowly under his breath.

Rey jerks her chin up high, and Iylos quits his examination of the tattered crosspiece wrapped over her chest and hips to meet her eyes.

“Neither. I’m with the Resistance. I escaped the First Order in that TIE fighter. Wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for _your_ interdiction field jerking me out of hyperspace.” She leaves out the skirmish in the TIEs that had _really_ landed them on the surface of this world.

“It’s not illegal to have an interdiction field,” Iylos shrugs smoothly, all business again. “Keeps us nice and clear of hyperspace travelers, usually.” He says ‘hyperspace travelers’ the same way he’d said ‘First Order.’

Rey returns his shrug. “It’s not illegal to be a hyperspace traveler. Or are things so primitive out here in Wild Space that you don’t know how to treat visitors like civilized beings?” In the back of her mind, something is screaming at her to stop making an enemy of this officer who holds all the sabacc cards in his hand, but she can’t find it in her to stop. An instinct somewhere deep, in an even older part of her brain, sings at the rightness of challenging this insufferable man.

He gives a short laugh, rough as gravel. “If you were really in Wild Space, you'd know it. I assure you, Lykos is as fine a world as any place in the Inner Rim. We’ve even got democracy here; are you familiar with the term?”

Rey feels her fingers curl, unbidden, into fists. “I told you, we’re not with the damned First Order,” she snarls.

Commander Iylos gives her a smile, presses himself a little closer to the glass and lowers his voice. “See, I don’t think I believe you.” He nods again at Kylo, who still hasn’t said anything. “Maybe if _he_ gives me a statement, I’d be more inclined to accept your story.” The commander steps away from the glass, takes a step closer to Kylo’s side of the cell.

Rey is overcome by a sudden, breathtaking wave of anger toward Iylos. She steps with the man, moving so that she stays between him and Kylo. “You don’t need to speak to him to confirm my story. If you don’t believe me, contact General Leia Organa.”

Iylos’ expression shutters, and he backs away from the cell, the transparisteel sliding back into place as he does. Rey gives a little twitch as the climate control in the room kicks back on and pumps a fresh breeze of cold air into the cell. The commander shoots her a smile that doesn’t come close to touching his eyes. “I don’t think I have anything more to say to you,” he says, shaking his head. “When your boyfriend there wants to talk, you let the guards know.” And with that, Iylos strides away.

Rey slams a fist against the transparisteel as he goes. “Sexist prick,” she mutters under her breath.

Kylo seems to wait until he’s sure the commander is gone before he speaks. “Rey,” he says lowly, just loud enough to get her attention. “Don’t give them my name.”

She cuts him a narrow look over her shoulder. “Why not? You’ve made such efforts to choose it over the one you were given. Aren’t you proud of it?” she asks, bitterly sarcastic. He frowns.

“Rey.” There is a pleading urgency to his voice.

“Maybe if you give me a ‘please,’” she arches an eyebrow at him.

He’s quiet for a long moment, so long that Rey scoffs and turns her back to him once more.She hadn't really expect him to do it anyway. She stares glumly through the transparisteel, arms looped tight around her knees as she contemplates her next move, when behind her she hears him whisper.

“Please.”

She snaps around, fixing him with a look of surprise. For the first time that day, Rey notices how deeply the dark hollows beneath his eyes are carved, how sickly pale his skin shines beneath the buzzing overhead lights. She shouldn’t take pity on him, knows this, but does anyway. She never should have asked him to beg, even jokingly. The way he says ‘please’ does things to her head and her heart. Compromising things.

Kylo is running his own dark eyes over her in return, and Rey tries to imagine what he sees. Her hair has come untied somewhere along the way and must be a mess at this point. She's positively grimy with soot from the _Supremacy_ and dirt from the forest floor. The skin around her eyes feels fragile and tight, and she imagines her own shadows are likely etched there.

“... Please,” he says again, louder this time, but also somehow softer. She swallows hard, breaks their shared look before she can fall victim to those pretty eyes.

“Alright. _Ben_. Just Ben?” She endeavors to keep her tone unaffected, flippant even.

He drops his head, looks down at the arm that must be bandaged beneath his borrowed shirt. “Sure. I’ve got no one anyway.”

Rey opens her mouth to correct him, then changes her mind. It might be true enough. For all she knows, Leia is gone. And she… well, she doesn’t know what they are to each other. Never really has, if she’s honest with herself. All she can say for sure is they are not, as the Lykans say, ‘mates.’

* * *

The small black-haired guard eventually returns, this time with two carbonite trays of food balanced on one arm. At her command the panel in the wall obediently slides up just far enough for her to slip the food under. Rey catches her scent as she shoves the trays in; she smells nice, pleasantly floral, with a hint of the spice Rey remembers from the forest, which makes her wonder whether this woman had been there. She’s relieved to learn Iylos’ unpleasantness seems to be uniquely him, rather than endemic to the Lykans as a whole.

“I’m Anthia,” the guard offers Rey a hesitant smile, “I don’t think I mentioned that before, sorry.”

Rey returns the smile. Compared with Iylos, she’s feeling downright warm and fuzzy toward Anthia. “I’m Rey.” She reaches out and slides one of the trays to the corner of the room, where it comes to a stop against Kylo’s foot. “This is Ben.” She watches Anthia quickly snatch up the name and store it, no doubt for her commander to use later, but that’s fine, she and Kylo have already come to their agreement.

Kylo offers Anthia a perfunctory nod before bending over to retrieve his tray. Rey frowns as she watches him stiffen, wrinkling his nose at the plate of food. Stuck up sod.

“Something the matter, Ben?” Anthia asks. Her tone is neutral and polite, but Rey gets the sense she is storing away another vital detail in her mind right now.

Ben slants a narrow, suspicious look at the Lykan, as if he has also noticed this. “No,” he says bluntly, ripping off a chunk of bread and popping it in his mouth.

Rey catches something like smugness glinting in Anthia’s yellow-green eyes when she turns back to the clear panel. That’s something to unpack for another time; right now she’s too tired and hungry to bother worrying about more Lykan games.

“Anything else you need?” the petite woman offers, looking again at Rey. Rey chews her own hunk of bread thoughtfully, considering.

“Your commander was… difficult earlier. I offered to put him in contact with my people if he needed to be put at ease about me— _us_ —and he all but ignored me. Will he really not act on the information I’ve given him?”

“Commander Iylos has unusual methods sometimes,” Anthia evades diplomatically. “Who are your people? I can see what I can do.”

“I’m with the Resistance. I was on a mission under orders of General Leia Organa. I have protocols for making contact in the event of a… situation,” Rey offers up the information a second time, hoping this time she’s been heard. Hoping there is anyone left out there to answer the call, should the Lykans place it.

Anthia shakes her head. “Not necessary, thank you. I know someone in Themis; I’ll reach out, and we can go from there.”

“Thank you,” Rey sighs, shoulders sagging instantly with relief.

“Of course. Anything else, before I leave?” Rey just shakes her head, now visibly relaxed but also finally letting her own exhaustion show through her fronting.

“Oh, I have an update on the cell situation, before I forget,” Anthia smiles slyly, and Rey flushes. The Lykan clearly noticed her earlier demand had slipped her mind entirely. One more detail no doubt securely deposited, to be withdrawn and spent against her later.

“Great.” Rey does her best to infuse the word with anticipation, but if she’s being totally honest with herself, she couldn’t care less right now. At this point, Kylo Ren could spend all night and the next day glaring daggers at her, and she’d probably still fall into a dead sleep right there on the floor.

“Unfortunately, there are no other cells to put you into right now,” Anthia informs her. “You’ll have to stay put until you’re cleared or until something else frees up.” She glances around the small cell, eyes landing on Kylo’s corner. “I could bring another cot, if that helps.”

Before Rey can open her mouth, Kylo suddenly snaps, “That won’t be necessary.” Rey shoots him an aghast look. “I’d rather sleep on the floor than have something else to trip over in this doshing _closet_.”

That’s funny, Rey thinks, he hasn’t gotten up once, much less tripped on anything.

Anthia’s diplomacy is apparently boundless, as it no doubt must be in order to work with someone as coarse as Commander Iylos. She simply nods once, leaving his foul language completely unacknowledged, and leaves the way she came, after one last small smile at Rey.

Rey opens her mouth to scold Kylo for being rude to the only person who’s bothered to help them, but he speaks before she can.

“You shouldn’t just tell anyone you meet that you’re part of that band of traitors,” he snorts.

Rey glares at him. “You heard their commander, they clearly have no love for the First Order. That’s why you don’t want to talk to them, isn’t it?” she accuses. “So what’s the harm?”

Kylo rolls his eyes and pushes his half-eaten plate of food up against the wall. “You don’t know Iylos wasn’t playing you.” He looks at her intently, as if he is trying to lift her thoughts from her mind. “I can tell you can’t trust him. Who’s to say he wasn’t lying? You’re not worried you might lead an enemy straight to your precious rebels?” His voice twists bitterly around his last few words.

She scoffs at him. “Just because we’re not a bunch of well-funded authoritarians obsessed with pomp and circumstance doesn’t mean we don’t know how to set up a secure contact protocol for dealing with an unknown third party.”

He snorts again. “If you say so. I know what a trusting fool my mother is though,” he says with venom.

“Oh just switch off, Ben,” Rey mutters, leaning her head back against the transparisteel and closing her eyes against the bright cell lights. Kriff, it has been a long day.

The seconds tick past, and she can feel him still watching her; it makes her headache prickle uncomfortably in the space behind her eyes. “What?” Rey finally snaps, bloodshot hazel eyes flying open to find him looking at her, sure enough.

He clears his throat. “Take the bed. I’ve been here all day. It’ll be better if we switch spots every now and then.” He jerks his chin toward his unfinished tray. “You can have the rest of my food if you want. I’m not hungry.”

“I’m fine here,” Rey grumbles testily. She may be exhausted, but she’s even more stubborn. He opens his mouth to argue with her, a spark of frustration leaping into his dark eyes, but Rey curls up on the floor with her back to him and cuts him off first, “Now I’m going to try to sleep, so seriously, shut up.”

He clenches his jaw, but obeys her request.

Rey dozes in and out of consciousness for a while, kept from true sleep by the bright cell lights and the hard durasteel floor. When the guards finally switch the lights to a lower night-cycle setting, she opens her eyes and risks a glance toward Kylo Ren’s corner. To her surprise, she can’t trace the large, brooding shape of him below the blankets on the cot. Her eyes scan the cell, and land on a shadowy lump in the corner opposite hers. He’s curled up stubbornly on the floor, in a position nearly identical to her own.

Before she can help herself, Rey huffs a quiet laugh into the dark cell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [TIE Interceptor.](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/TIE/IN_interceptor)   
>  [TIE Avenger.](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/TIE/ad_starfighter)   
>  [Interdiction field.](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Interdiction_field)   
>  Wild Space.   
>  [Sonic weapon.](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Sonic_weapon%22)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> I've made up the Lykos system and the planets in it (fun fact: Lykos is Greek for "wolf"). Commander Drys Iylos is also a fiction (I imagine his first name rhymes with "Swiss," and the vowels in Iylos are "ee" as in "bee" and "o" as in "low."
> 
> Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think so far!


	2. Weakness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Ben settle uneasily into life as cellmates. Each of them has a chance to confront their disappointment with which way the other turned back on the Supremacy.

Rey wakes up to the blaring hum of the day-cycle lighting flipping on. Her nose wrinkles in displeasure and she squeezes her eyes tightly shut against the sudden brightness. Otherwise, she is not uncomfortable, curled up on the metallic floor. She’s spent the last few weeks either sleeping upright in the  _ Falcon’s _ cockpit or curled up against rocks while on Ahch-To, and before, on Jakku, she hadn’t exactly been living in luxury. A night on the floor of a Lykan prison cell is not going to phase her.

Ben is another matter entirely, it seems. While Rey has resigned herself to the sudden, intrusively bright morning, getting up for the day with little trouble, he manages to look both as if he’s never slept a day in his life, and like he’ll never fully open his eyes again. His thick dark hair lies flat against one side of his face and sticks out wildly on the other. The skin underneath his eyes looks only marginally less bruised than yesterday, and there is an imprint of the durasteel floor’s creasing against one cheek that almost mirrors the scar cutting across the other. Rey fights back a smirk as she watches him gingerly stretch the soreness out of his absurdly long limbs, wincing every now and again. No doubt conditions on the  _ Finalizer  _ and the  _ Supremacy  _ were a bit more posh.

“Morning,” she chirps, amused at his sluggishness, and the look Ben gives her is so bleary-eyed that Rey wonders if he’s quite fully awake yet. Ben seems as if he might be wondering that himself. He blinks at her, forehead wrinkled in concentration, as if he is trying to discern whether or not she is a dream. When a few minutes tick by without her disappearing, his eyes soften slightly, and Rey feels her own amused smirk smooth over into something gentler. Then he straightens under her gaze and the bones in his neck give a loud pop. Rey winces as his face twists into a scowl.

“You can take the bed.”

Ben’s scowl darkens as he rubs the thick muscle at the back of his neck. “I don’t want it.” It’s the grumpiest she’s ever heard his voice, at least directed toward her.

Rey rolls her eyes. First thing in the morning and he’s going to be stubborn? She can’t help but feel this doesn’t bode well for the rest of their shared sentence. “Just take the damn bed, Ben. If you’re going to be ill-tempered from sleeping on the floor, it’s not going to help either of us.”

He’s quiet for a long moment, and Rey thinks he might be on the verge of agreeing, when he meets her arched look.

“I saw where you lived on Jakku,” he murmurs. “I want you to have the bed.”

Rey reddens, and conversely he pales as he watches her reaction. Her first impulse is to be upset. In all that’s happened in the span of a few short days, it had all but slipped her mind that he’d been in her head, that he’d seen her past. His words from the throne room echo in her ears.  _ Your parents were filthy junk traders… you’re nothing…  _ And for an instant, a retort sits hot on her lips, ready to be spat at him with venom. Then she registers the soft earnestness in his eyes. She can see no pity or condescension in them.

_ You’re nothing… but not to me… _

She takes a breath. Swallows her poisonous response and carefully crafts another. “I lived there,” she considers the wall of silver etched marks, her voice wavering a little around the lump it raises in her throat, “for years. That was my life—that still feels like my life, in some ways. I’m suited to it.” 

She hasn’t been off Jakku long enough to no longer be a rough, half-wild thing, grabbing for every scrap of give she can get. Doesn’t know whether there will be enough time left in her life to bleed all of the Jakku out of her. It’s one more reason the ragtag band of Resistance fighters will always suit her better than the well-oiled machine of tyranny and bureaucracy and hierarchy this would-be prince has offered her.

Something bright flickers in Ben’s eyes, some spark of realization, as if his thoughts are trailing after hers. For a brief moment, there’s a fierce sort of affection there, that suggests he is proud of her coarseness, her wildness, and wouldn’t have her any other way.

His jaw twists slightly, as if it goes against something in him to say the words—some chivalrous upbringing Rey would not understand perhaps—but finally he nods in agreement. “Okay, I’ll take it.” Rey feels a smile pulling at the corner of her lips as she watches his body visibly relax.

They sit easily in the silence, enjoying this brief peace that hangs in the air between them. Ben works through a set of stretches, still wincing a bit, and Rey tries to keep her eyes from wandering. It’s not that she wants to look at  _ him _ , or is entranced by the way the light gray of his shirt gives away the curve of every shifting muscle in his back. There’s just… nothing else to do in their plain white cell.

Outside there is the distant whoosh of a door blinking open, then the thud of two pairs of footsteps in the hallway. Anthia and a Lykan man materialize at the transparisteel panel before their cell. Both are wearing silvery jackets with red cuffs, suggesting the weather outside has taken a colder turn. Rey's mind clamors excitedly around the small detail; this is the longest she's ever spent without a view of the sky, and it's starting to have an affect.

Today Anthia is accompanied by another officer, the one from the forest, who’d cuffed Rey and been attacked by Ben. Apprehension flashes in his yellow-gold eyes as they flick once toward Ben, but he waits calmly at Anthia’s side as she fiddles with the controls outside the cell.

“Lieutenant Kallas and I will escort each of you to the refresher,” Anthia says as the transparisteel panel slides back entirely. Kallas steps into the cell, unclipping a pair of handcuffs from his red belt. They click open with one press against a fingerprint scanner, Rey notes, and then he brandishes the set, looking from Rey to Ben as if offering one of them to step up first.

Rey gets to her feet and offers him her wrists, thankful that this time the lieutenant cuffs her hands in front of her. When he steps toward her, she can tell he’s walking with a slight limp, so she shoots him a hesitant, hopefully reassuring smile when he looks up to meet her eyes. Ben is less generous; he glares when the man steps toward him with the second pair of cuffs, but makes no move to harm the officer at least. Still, Rey notices that the slight humming tone in the air gets just a bit more jarring. She shoots Ben a scolding look. She has no desire to repeat their earlier encounter with the Lykans’ sonic weapons, especially when the alternative is a chance to finally use a fresher. Their enclosed space has given Rey ample opportunity to come to the realization that she smells.

In the end they both allow themselves to be escorted down the mirror-white hallway by Anthia and the lieutenant, splitting off in opposite directions when they come to the end. Rey and Anthia are presented with an array of three doors to choose from. Rey can only guess at what the unfamiliar script on the front of each proclaims them to be, or why there are three (or six, if the other side of the hall is identical), but Anthia clearly knows what she is doing. She nudges Rey toward the leftmost door.

“I’ll wait out here,” she nods to the adjacent wall.

Rey takes her time showering. She gives herself a thorough examination as she does; it’s the first time she’s had any privacy to check herself out since their battle with Snoke’s guards. She’s pleased to find she’s come away from the intense ordeal without much more than a few cuts and bruises. She gives her freckled right shoulder the most study. She’d been wounded there by one of the crackling melee weapons and would no doubt scar from it, but the cut is already closed and in no need of treatment. She brushes her soapy fingertips along the deep red ridges. Strange shape, she muses.

She leaves her hair down to dry (also having no choice, since her ties are long gone) and reluctantly changes into the folded set of clothes that have been laid out for her. The long-sleeved, tabard-style gray tunic looks much warmer than her slightly singed gauzy wrappings, but she’d been especially fond of the outfit. May or may not have been dressing up a little bit for the occasion of what was supposed to have been the triumphant reclaiming of Ben Solo, not a disastrous clashing with Kylo Ren. There is no laundry droid, so she folds the clothes clumsily and takes them out to Anthia, who accepts them.

“Er, they’re not really damaged, so I’d like to keep them.” Rey knows in some places clothing is treated as something as disposable as food waste. She herself doesn’t have many possessions, and what few she has, she treasures fiercely.

“Of course,” Anthia replies easily, “This will be washed and returned to you upon your release.” Rey shoots her a smile of thanks, though she can’t help but wonder when, or if, the Lykans plan to do that exactly. 

The cell is empty when Rey returns, so she takes the opportunity to stretch her legs and stake out a new corner for herself. The minutes tick by, and Rey realizes she has been pacing, impatient energy bristling from her every movement. Registers that her disquiet is rooted in the fact that she’s waiting for Ben to return. 

She shakes her head at herself, still-damp hair swishing with the motion. Wasn’t she supposed to want a separate cell? She’d noticed the other rooms along this hallway that Anthia had led her past earlier looked empty. She shouldn’t be expecting,  _ anticipating _ , that Ben will return. She shouldn’t be evaluating their cell,  _ the  _ cell, for a new setup that will be comfortable for them both. She shouldn’t be watching the still-open transparisteel panel for anything but a potential opening for escape.

Anthia lingers in the hallway, and Rey is tempted to ask her for confirmation that Ben will be coming back, goes so far as to open her mouth, but at the last moment asks instead, “Is there anything to do in here? While we wait?”

The Lykan woman raises an eyebrow at her question, as if she finds it odd that Rey can’t think of  _ anything _ to do in a cell with nothing in it but a bed and a large (broodingly handsome) man. But in the end she offers to see if she can’t hunt down a deck of sabacc cards.

A few more uncomfortable moments pass in silence between them and then Ben and Kallas finally turn up. Ben looks as sullen as ever, but at least the lieutenant doesn’t appear any worse for wear as Anthia assists him with Ben’s cuffs. As Kallas turns to leave, he seems to remember something, and fishes a small plastic bottle out of his pocket.

“Medic says twice a day,” he says breezily, tossing it to Ben, who scowls as he catches it easily in one hand. Rey realizes they must have made an additional stop by the medbay for Ben’s injured arm, and kicks herself for being so anxious about his absence. Chalks the feeling of relief at his return up to loneliness, that old demon. It’s official, she decides; she must have abandonment issues, if the thought of her  _ literal enemy _ leaving her alone in this cell is enough to make her heart feel as if it is sinking in her chest.

The two guards leave and Ben settles into a new spot, not taking the same pains this time to keep as far from Rey as physically possible, but still leaving her enough space to be comfortable. There is a fresh set of sheets on the bed and their food trays have been cleared away. Rey is surprised at what an effect clean, warm clothes and a bit of tidying can have on improving her mood. Ben too seems a bit mollified.

He’s wearing a fresh gray knit shirt and new pants—Rey finds she quite likes the color on him in place of his customary solid black. It helps to soften the severity of his looks, and the color somehow brings out the lighter tones of muted amber in his eyes. He’s clearly also had an opportunity to use the showers (real water, not sonic). His hair is back to looking silky and coiffed, and Rey finds herself thinking back to the first time she’d seen his face, when he’d lifted his mask and she’d been so shocked at how markedly… unmonstrous he was underneath. She’s surprised at the realization that she still thinks so, despite all that she’s heard of him and all that she’s witnessed since.

Despite his brooding looks and the intensity of his dark, heavily shadowed eyes. Despite the severe slash of his scar. Rey finds she can only pity the bruised eyes, the raw, sometimes unnerving quality of his stare. She understands them far too well to begrudge them. And the scar… Rey finds herself flushing, of all things, at the thought of it. She is strangely smug in the knowledge that he will carry that reminder of her, of their coming together, until the end of his days. That he will see it every time he examines his reflection, will grow to see it (her) as much a part of his face, himself, as his eyes or his nose or his lips. The sense of possession, entitlement, it thrills her. Rey treasures fiercely the few possessions she has.

She loses herself to this line of thinking thoroughly enough to not realize that her contemplation of her freshly showered cellmate has crossed the line into full-on gaping. And now it is too late. He’s starting right back at her.

“What?” she asks boldly, as if she is not the guilty one. He doesn’t look embarrassed at being caught looking, which means Rey probably started the ogling, she thinks with an internal groan.

“You look better.” He nods at her. “You smell nice too,” he also offers, after a beat of contemplation—or maybe hesitation.

Rey gives him a strange look. No one had ever complimented her like that before. “I dunno, it’s the soap?” She’s not really sure what an appropriate response to that observation sounds like. He just keeps staring at her, nostrils flared and muscles tensed with how still he is holding himself. She’s intimately familiar by now with the intently searching look he is giving her.

She breathes in deeply. Doesn’t think she can smell any soap on him at all. In fact, Rey thinks this is the first time he’s smelled more himself than anything else. He’d leaned in close, in the interrogation chamber on Starkiller Base, and he’d been all but buried beneath the scent of engine fuel and plasma and leather. And when they’d stood together aboard the  _ Supremacy, _ it had been all soot and fear and sweat laced with adrenaline. 

They are the smells of empire and battle, harsh and undesirable. Rey rationalizes this must be why the smell of Ben, just Ben, that meets her nose now is so irresistible. In comparison. It’s irresistible in comparison. It’s no doubt the same rationale behind his new appreciation for her own smell. She must have reeked of Jakku in the beginning. Of desperation, survival, perpetual dirtiness.

Rey looks away from him, clenching her jaw, and tries to ignore how nice the whole cell is starting to smell now that he’s had a chance to perfume the air with his warm body. She can’t even imagine how nice he must smell in the crook of his neck, where his pulse beats. She scowls at herself for the thought, and Ben misinterprets the look as directed at him, his comment.

“Sorry,” he says tightly. Scoots a little bit farther away, until he’s got his face buried in the opposite corner of the cell again. He loops his arms around his knees, and Rey can see a tendon standing out tense against the muscles of his neck.

* * *

When Kallas emerges with more food and a well-thumbed pack of sabacc cards, the chilly silence between them still sits unbroken like a layer of ice along the top of a lake.

“Aren’t you two chummy,” he remarks lightly as he slides the deck of cards into the cell. The comment strikes Rey as perhaps a sly probe for information in the spirit of Anthia, so she offers no reply.

She wolfs down her food, then picks up the deck of cards and coaxes them out of their soft-worn box, shuffling them aimlessly for something to do. First she arranges them by color. Then by the shapes pictured on the right side. When she starts stacking them into a delicate tower, Ben sighs.

“Do you want to play?” he asks her.

“I don’t know how,” Rey admits. Something heartbreaking occurs to her. “Han said he’d teach me. Said he’d show me the hand he used to win the  _ Falcon _ ,” she whispers. Every muscle in Ben’s body locks up, but he doesn’t say a word. Just stays very still, like he is afraid any movement will set her off. 

His reaction stands in stark contrast to the night they’d met through the bond while she was on Ahch-To, when his eyes had glittered in the starlight and his pale chest had held the light of the moon and he’d stepped close and told her with confidence to let the past die. He seems so much more nervous now than the last time they’d spoken about his father. Maybe because this time there is no escaping instantaneously to separate sides of the galaxy once the Force is through with them.

“You as much as called him a weakness. Was that because you didn’t hate him? Because you loved him?” Ben doesn’t answer her; he doesn’t need to. Rey knows the truth.

“Why did you ask me to rule with you?” she asks him, struggling to speak without choking on the emotions suddenly overwhelming her. “I don’t understand. You’ve been… kind to me. And we have this connection. How is that different than your connection with your father? What made you think I deserved to be spared, while he deserved to die?”

“He didn’t deserve to die,” Ben says softly, glancing down into his plate, before Rey can catch the anguish slowly gathering in his eyes, shadowing them like storm clouds. “And you are nothing like him.”

“So do you hate me?” the words are more difficult to speak that they should be, but Rey voices them anyway. She dreads to hear his answer—they stand at opposite ends of this war, she stole his memories and tore his face in two and shot him out of the sky, of course he bloody hates her—but she’s been ill at ease since Snoke’s throne room. She needs to know what this is.

“No, I don’t,” he whispers, without hesitation.

Rey can feel her eyes growing soft with tears, but she makes herself meet his gaze. His eyes have always spoken so much more than his words, and she is desperate to understand. “Then why?”

He gives her a sharp look, as if she should know full well why. “I asked because I saw you as a strength, not a weakness. You’re my equal in the Force,” he swallows, his voice catching, “How could you be my weakness?”

Something seems to snap in Rey’s chest, flooding her with warmth. She thinks she might be able to feel the bond between them buzzing low in the back of her head, struggling against the sonic incapacitators to manifest. Wordlessly they regard each other across the cell, Ben watching as one tear finally escapes to run down Rey’s wide cheek, Rey watching the muscle that ticks slightly in the hollow of Ben’s eye, as if with the effort of keeping something held within.

“I’ll teach you to play sabacc,” Ben finally breaks the stretching silence between them, pulling her thoughts from their runaway trajectory. He stretches out one large hand for the deck, considering her. “You’ll need to come a little closer though,” he warns, an edge of dry humor in his voice. Rey can sense he just wants to change the topic, but so does she, so she puts out her arms and gathers the deck into a haphazard pile. He easily taps its sides until it’s an orderly stack, and then he deals.

He seems genuinely content to teach her. For a brief moment, Rey allows herself to imagine if she’d been able to put down her lightsaber and go with him, back on Starkiller Base. Would their time together have been spent like this, him carefully explaining, as gentle in his instruction as he is vicious in most other things? And her, softly joking with him, until she’d coaxed a smile from those full lips? She knows he never would have disappointed her as Luke did. He could wield his grandfather’s lightsaber sometimes, and sometimes she could wield his. She still remembers the feeling of it in Snoke’s throne room: large, thrumming with a wild power, perhaps a bit unstable but intoxicating to hold.

She shakes her head, shuffling her thoughts and the cards back into order as they finish a hand. His proximity is having an oddly derailing effect on her, like a magnet on a drive. She suspects it might work both ways. The longer they carry on, the more mistakes he makes, the less eloquent his explanations of strategy. He can’t seem to hide the soft openness in his eyes, not even a little bit, and Rey learns to read his bluffs from a parsec away. By the end of half an hour, Rey swears she can even smell his scent spiking if he’s got a good hand. They quietly abandon sabacc, and Rey goes back to stacking cards into towers. 

They don’t try to move any farther apart.

* * *

Rey is dreaming when she’s suddenly jerked awake. She uncurls herself slowly on the durasteel floor, disoriented as her brain takes its time moving from head space to real space. At first she’s not sure what’s woken her up. She wasn’t having a nightmare. They’re in the middle of Lykos’ night cycle—the lights are low, and there’s not a sound in the cell except for her and Ben’s breathing. Then she smells him. Ben.

He’s afraid. She can feel it somehow, as she takes his scent inside of her and it settles in, as if in the process his fear becomes hers. He’s anxious, and she can feel the adrenaline as if it is shot through her own system. Rey pulls up her legs beneath her, balancing on the balls of her feet as she quickly scans the cell for any hidden danger. Finding none, she focuses her attention back on Ben.

He’s curled up on the bare mattress (he’d gotten her to concede to taking the blanket if she was also going to be taking the floor), his back facing the rest of the cell. She can tell he’s heard her get up, and he’s struggling now to regulate his breathing back down to something less agitated.

“Ben,” Rey calls out hesitantly, “are you okay?”

He whispers her name back and it’s laced with a shudder. Rey feels her hair stand on end, and without thinking she crawls across the small room to the side of the cot. Her eyes have adjusted to the low light by now, and she can see how taut each muscle in the wide expanse of his back is being held beneath the soft gray fabric of his shirt. Rey frowns at that, and gently lays a hand against the thick muscle stretching over his left shoulder, her thumb brushing slightly against his neck as she does. She feels his body pull tighter beneath her hand, and she almost jerks away, but then the tension relaxes out of him, and he sighs.

“Go back to sleep,” he says quietly. His breathing is calmer, but Rey can still feel his pulse thudding wildly in his neck. She rubs her thumb against the skin there ever so slightly, listens to his breath catch.

“What’s wrong, Ben?” She can tell he’s not okay. She leans over his body, still curled in on itself defensively, trying to make out his face in the darkness. He still smells afraid (what does fear even smell like? Rey wonders to herself. How does she know that's what she smells?). But at this proximity, Rey is more overwhelmed by the dark muskiness underlying it that is uniquely Ben. She feels her cheeks warm with the pleasure of his smell, and he tenses beneath her hand again, as if he had sensed her sudden intoxication. She snatches her hand back, chagrined. 

Rey removes herself from his personal space, embarrassed at how automatically she’d been drawn to curl around him. She sits on the floor against the bed and pulls up her knees to her chest. He’s quiet for a long moment, and Rey thinks maybe he’s decided not to answer her. Fine. She can see now that he’s in no danger, but something in her says not to leave, even if it’s just to retreat a few steps away to the other side of the small cell. She curls her arms around her knees and prepares to fall asleep sitting there, keeping watch—no, not keeping watch, just changing position to rest her joints—when his husky voice comes to her.

“Do you know how long I had to feel peaceful in my head? To feel happy? Hopeful?” Rey sits quietly at the side of the bed, waiting for him to supply an answer to his own questions. 

“From the moment I killed Snoke, to the moment you reached out for the lightsaber instead of my hand.” Rey feels her stomach turn and something in her chest go icy in response. His body whispers against the sheets on the mattress until she senses through the darkness that he’s sitting up in the bed, his back still hunched against her. “Why did you reject me? You wouldn’t have felt alone anymore, you wouldn’t. We could have ruled together.” 

Rey swallows thickly. He says it like  _ together  _ means something so much more than him and her, working alongside each other.

_ You wouldn’t have felt alone anymore.  _

_ I wouldn’t have either  _ goes unsaid, but she catches the words where they lurk amongst the others.

“You wanted me to understand about my parents so that I’d want to let go too, didn’t you? You wanted to manipulate me.” She shifts around until she’s sitting with her arms and her chin resting on the edge of the mattress. He still doesn’t look at her.

An edge of frustration creeps into his voice. “You  _ should  _ want to let go,” he growls. The flimsy cot groans sharply, as if one of its supports is being crushed by a large hand. Rey sighs.

“Just because they’re wrong doesn’t mean you’re right, Ben. There’s another path. Feeling disappointed by Luke or by your parents doesn’t mean they deserve to burn.” Rey gives voice to this truth, the moment the words leave her lips, she has the sense that deep down, Ben might already know it. But knowing isn’t the same as stopping. She thinks he might believe this is a match that’s already been struck: now that the flame has been realized, it’s too late. All that’s left to do is watch it all burn.

The feeling of bondedness flares between them, strong as ever. They don’t need to feel connected to the Force to feel connected to each other. Rey’s come to realize that. They’re two sides to the same pain, the same fear, the same desire. She understands him because he is her shadow, her darker self from an alternate plane of existence. She knows that he knows there are other paths, she knows that he feels trapped, and afraid, and so so hateful of nearly every moment in his past, not just the ones starring Luke or Leia or Han.

“He would torture you like that too, wouldn’t he?” Rey asks. She doesn’t want to say his name, doesn’t have to. Ben knows who she means. It’s a question she doesn’t really have to ask: the answer had been written all over his face the moment Snoke had reached out and touched her with the Force. He’d known what was coming, intimately. Rey doesn’t need an answer. He’s resisting, and she needs him to understand. 

“I feel it too. His voice, twisting into my skull like screws. I can hear it when I’m trying to go to sleep sometimes, and he only did it to me the one time. Ben,” her eyes flick up in the darkness to find that he is still turned away from her, but his head is twisted to the side, to listen. She brushes her fingers tentatively against his hand where it rests against the sheets, propping him up. “It’s okay. You’re not alone.”

His fingers flutter against her own, as if he wants to pull away but can’t bring himself to. “That’s an easy thing to say when we’re trapped here together.” His voice isn’t angry, just sad.

Rey knows better than to argue with him. His uncle was a lecturer, his father a charmer, his mother a senator; he’s used to being let down by talk. She lets her actions speak for her instead. 

She gets to her knees, wincing at the leg that has fallen asleep while she sat on the cold hard floor, and eases herself onto the cot next to him. It creaks again like he is gripping the edge too tightly, but he makes no move to push her away. Rey presses herself gently against his warm back, and after a moment of hesitation at what to do with her hands, loops one arm around his waist, and curls the other around his broad shoulder, the one she’d touched before.

“You’re not alone, Ben. You’re not.” 

He doesn’t argue, or agree, or tell her she’s not alone either. He just lets her hold him flush against her small chest until they’re both too tired to keep their eyes open.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought so hard about leaving this on a sort of cliff-hanger note before deciding this chapter was already long enough. Get ready for some action next chapter though!
> 
> To anyone out there who saw "A/B/O" in the tags and came over in search of sexy times, my apologies. Apparently I am incapable of writing Reylo smut without 10,000+ words of emotional buildup and angst ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading, I hope you're enjoying the story! I'd love some feedback or just your impressions so far!


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